Go Your Own Way: The Other Side of Fleetwood Mac’s Breakup

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

Go Your Own Way, from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours, is the furious counterpart to the album’s other famous breakup song. Where Stevie Nicks’s “Dreams” processes the end of their relationship with cool grace, Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” is the wounded, accusatory side — driving, bitter, the sound of a man who is hurt and wants the other person to know it.

The cruelty of having to sing along

Here’s what makes it almost unbearable, and unforgettable: the two of them had to perform it together. Nicks reportedly objected to a line she felt unfairly characterized her — and then had to stand beside Buckingham and sing harmony on his version of their breakup, night after night, for years. The whole band was doing this, airing real heartbreak in songs the offending ex-partner had to help perform. Rumours is built from that excruciating arrangement.

Anger that drives

The song channels its hurt into momentum — the relentless rhythm, the slashing guitars, the sense of someone pushing forward precisely because they can’t look back. It’s a breakup song that storms off rather than collapses, and that defiant energy is why it became one of the band’s signature anthems.

What it measures like

On our measurements it’s driving and intense — propulsive, urgent rock with a hard forward push, the hurt converted into speed. Full profile on its song page.

Go Your Own Way appears on Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours; its place as Lindsey Buckingham’s side of the band’s breakups, and Stevie Nicks’s objection to a lyric, are widely documented. No lyrics are reproduced.